Friday, July 11, 2014

Narrative exercise day! Today we'll deal with one of three scenarios in some way.

1) You're printing something important and your printer's ink has just started going out.
2) Lighting off fireworks on the Fourth of July, one begins wobbling when the person lighting it runs away, and it tips over (pointing at the narrator, or others) just before shooting off.
3) Crossing a bridge, you see a person standing on the railing about to jump.

Pick one of those scenarios and do with it what you will, whether you just drive by the person about to jump and never see if they did or not, the firework shoots into a crowd and there's horrible viscera, or a half-dozen obstacles keep you from getting your item printed, and you end up in the most dysfunctional Kinkos ever (the bluest of the blues).

A Word About Notebooking

I believe strongly that keeping a notebook of snippets and interesting tidbits of information, dialogue, quotes, observations etc. is of great use to a writer. For one, I think the act of writing it down strengthens your memory of the thing you thought might be memorable enough to write, despite the inability to sit down at the given time to write an entire piece. David Kirby spoke well to the idea of a writer's notebook in an interview with Stephen Reichert of Smartish Pace when he said:

I’d have the young poets maintain a stockpile of linguistic bits: stories, weird words, snatches of conversation they’d overheard, lines from movies they’d seen or books they’d read. Most young poets will say something like, “Well, I have to write a poem now. Let’s see; what can I write about?” And then they end up writing about their own experiences, and, let’s face it, we all have the same experiences. So what all poets need is a savings account they can raid from time to time

This site is both a general writing blog, and one to help spark the writer's mind for ten to thirty minutes a day with short exercises which may not be full stories or poems, but will hopefully serve as a reservoir for future works.

About Me

I'm a writer living and teaching in San Diego. I received my BA from California State University, Long Beach, and my MFA from The University of Washington where I was the coordinating editor at The Seattle Review as it transitioned into its current "Long View" form. My writing has appeared in The Southern Review, The North American Review, The New York Quarterly, Permafrost, Bayou, 5AM, The California Quarterly, The Evansville Review, The Georgetown Review, Dark Matter, Cutthroat, Cairn, Miller's Pond, Pearl and The Lullwater Review among others and is forthcoming in ONTHEBUS's long awaited double issue, The Cape Rock and Exit 7. I've been once nominated for a Pushcart Prize and once did not receive a Pushcart Prize. I'm giving facial hair a go now too. Go figure.